


How I Love To Love Nadine

by Edonohana



Category: The Stand - Stephen King
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Possesses Their Younger Self, Creepy Dream Sex, F/M, Ghosts, Going Back in Time to Fix the Future, Horror, Redemption
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-09
Updated: 2018-09-09
Packaged: 2019-07-08 15:57:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,669
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15933713
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Edonohana/pseuds/Edonohana
Summary: The ghost of Nadine Cross visits her pre-plague self to set her on a better path.





	How I Love To Love Nadine

**Author's Note:**

  * For [scioscribe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/scioscribe/gifts).



Nadine dreamed.

She stood on some high place, a roof or a mountaintop. The stars burned white above her, brighter than she’d ever seen in life, undimmed by electric lights. But both the ground where she stood and the land below were shrouded in darkness.

 _This is_ his _kind of place,_ she thought. _In a moment, I’ll see him._

The knowledge brought her an uneasy mixture of fear and desire. She always awoke from these dreams with her hand between her thighs, rubbing frantically, soaked in sweat. Often, she’d be sore and chafed the next morning; sometimes, she found that she’d scratched herself and bled; always, she was left not sated but dissatisfied, as if she’d gorged herself on a dream-banquet that left her filled with nothing but hunger. 

Nadine listened. 

Sometimes rats scurried in his wake. Sometimes he was heralded by the heavy flapping of crows. But most often, she heard the steady clack of bootheels a moment before he emerged from shadow—well, mostly emerged. She’d still never seen his face.

 _And this is your dream lover,_ some rebellious part of her whispered. _A faceless man attended by carrion-eaters._

Still. He was hers. And she was his. What other woman had a lover so loyal that he spent a lifetime attending her dreams? 

A whisper of wind. The soft padding of bare feet. 

Nadine turned. And saw herself. 

Even with the easy acceptance of dreams, it was hard for her to fathom. The other Nadine stood barefoot, clad in billowing white gauze and wind-whipped white hair. All of her hair, white as salt. White as bone. She was pregnant. Her skin was red and horribly blistered. 

Nadine knew immediately that the other Nadine was a ghost. She must have died in a fire. Probably her nightgown had blown into a candle. 

“No,” said the other Nadine. “Would you like to see how I died?”

She took a delicate step closer. Nadine edged back. But she could only take a few steps before she got to the edge of the roof or the cliff or the world—the darkness was very, very deep.

“No,” Nadine said. “No, I don’t want to know!”

“If you know, you can change it.”

Nadine shook her head. An unreasoning fear had filled her at the sight of her own dead self. She was so close now that the wind blew a strand of the ghost’s white hair into Nadine’s own mouth. She spat it out, jerking her head aside, and stood with her arms wrapped close to her body, huddled into herself. Gauze billowed against her, delicate and loathsome as slug slime.

“Get away from me!” Nadine shouted. But she couldn’t step back without tumbling into the abyss, and she couldn’t push the other Nadine away, because that would mean touching her.

“I’d meant to do this more gently,” said the other Nadine. “Oh, well.”

She laid her hand on Nadine’s forehead. Nadine forced herself not to jerk back and fall. And then a cascade of memories poured into her mind, instantaneous and overwhelming. Captain Trips. Joe-Leo. Larry. Harold. The bomb. 

The night in the desert with Randall Flagg, when she’d seen his face at last.

Trembling, Nadine opened her eyes. The other Nadine dragged her back from the edge. 

Nadine jerked away. “Don’t touch me!”

“I’m trying to save you.” 

“I know, but…” Nadine knew the memories were true. But the only emotion she could muster was horror. She recoiled from the other Nadine as she recoiled from the knowledge of what her dream lover really was. And, more, what she—the other Nadine, her ghost, herself—had done. Would do. 

She took refuge in curiosity. “Is this real? Will I remember when I wake up?”

The other Nadine nodded, though Nadine thought she saw a flicker of doubt. “My power— _your_ power—is your virginity. An unbroken vessel. His power is his seed. When he destroyed mine, I took some of his.”

“A Pyrrhic victory,” said Nadine. She didn’t make many classical allusions, even basic ones like that. Most people didn’t catch them, and it was tiresome to see the blank looks. But the one good part about talking to yourself was that you knew everything you knew.

“A worthwhile one, if you change this. And you can. I’ve given you everything you need. Everything I know. But he won’t know about this. I’ve hidden it from him. As long as you don’t tell him, it’ll be our little secret.” The other Nadine giggled, her eyes bright and dead as the moon overhead. 

That, as much as anything the other Nadine had told or shown her, made Nadine ask the next question. She never wanted _her_ eyes to look like that, or to hear that giggle coming out of her own mouth. “What do I do to change things?”

“You could start by not blowing up the Free Zone Council. And lose your virginity. Have sex with Harold—real sex.”

 _Real sex?_ Nadine thought. She knew what the other Nadine meant, but she’d always felt secretly contemptuous of girls who thought they could do anything but and still be a virgin. If it could give you a social disease, the exact act that transmitted it seemed a bit of a technicality.

“Or sex with Larry,” the other Nadine said impatiently. “Sex with anyone. Just don’t save yourself for _him_.”

On that matter, Nadine was in agreement. Shuddering, she said, “I won’t.”

The other Nadine’s form began to flicker like a TV set switching between channels. She was pregnant. She wasn’t pregnant. She was in that billowing gauze nightgown. She was in jeans and a cotton shirt. Her skin was burned. It wasn’t. 

She was crushed and dead, caught at the moment of impact but somehow still standing, a pink mist hovering above the ruin of flesh and bone. A hole in what had once been her face worked horribly, forcing out the word, “Remember!”

 

Nadine woke up with a jolt in a tangle of sweaty sheets. She’d had such a vivid dream. And not a sex dream, for once. But it was already fading. She rolled over, saw the notebook where she recorded her dreams, and began to scribble away.

Some time later, she put down her pen, wrung out her aching hand, and glanced over what she’d written. She had page after page of terse, barely-legible notes like “Plague center in Stovington VT” and “M-O-O-N spells DON’T DO IT” and “His real name is Leo Rockway,” concluding with what appeared to be instructions to herself, written in capitals just in case she missed that this was important stuff:

HAVE SEX WITH HAROLD.  
HAVE SEX WITH LARRY.  
HAVE SEX WITH LUCY.  
HAVE SEX WITH DAYNA.  
GO TO THE NEAREST BAR, TONIGHT, AND HAVE SEX WITH THE FIRST MAN YOU SEE.  
HAVE SEX WITH ONE MAN EVERY NIGHT UNTIL CAPTAIN TRIPS.

Nadine laughed. Her subconscious must be _really_ sexually frustrated. And, apparently, bisexual. 

_Captain Trips_ , she mused. She supposed he must be some dream true love. An Army captain? A police chief? A naval officer from the Age of Sail? It was a great name, anyway.

Yawning, she wandered into the bathroom and reached out to swing open the mirror over the sink. And saw that her hair, which the night before had been black shot through with white, had gone white, pure white, white with only a single lock of black. 

The entire dream came back in a rush, including the memories of her own life—the other Nadine’s life—that had been forced into her mind. Nadine’s knees buckled, and she sank to the floor. She didn’t want to believe it. But she couldn’t deny the proof that had been stamped into her own body.

She sat huddled on the floor until the ringing of her phone made her jump. She answered it, and discovered that she’d forgotten to come in to school. That was something she’d never done in her entire career as a teacher.

“I’m sick,” she said. She certainly _felt_ sick. “The flu. Sorry. I should’ve called. I’m a bit feverish and I lost track of the time.”

The principal, though obviously irritated, was also sympathetic and asked if she needed a lift to the hospital. 

“No, I’ll just ride it out. I’ll call later today. Let you know if I can come in tomorrow.” Nadine hung up. 

_The flu_. Soon the entire world would have that excuse. Sorry, can’t come in ever again. Absent forever.

Her students—Nadine bit her lip. It was so strange to have already grieved for deaths that hadn’t happened yet. The other Nadine’s emotions had come along with her memories. Nadine supposed that helped lessen the shock, at least to the extent that she was able to pick herself up off the floor. 

She walked to the kitchen in a daze, barely feeling her feet hitting the floor. If she’d had any alcohol in the house, she’d have drunk it, but unfortunately she didn’t. She drank three cups of black coffee instead. Finally, she fetched her notebook from her bedside table. But when she opened it, she remembered that it was full of lovingly detailed descriptions of every meeting she’d ever had with her dream lover, her dark bridegroom. Randall Flagg, whom she could now remember raping her. Putting his monstrous child inside her. That was all he’d ever wanted from her.

Her stomach heaved, and she once again had to slide to the floor. She pressed her forehead against the cold metal of the refrigerator until the nausea subsided. 

She _hadn’t_ been raped. She was still a virgin. What had the other Nadine called it? _An unbroken vessel_. But she remembered the fear, the pain, the violation. Worst of all, she remembered her mind slipping away. 

“It didn’t happen!” she said aloud. Then, quietly, “It _won’t."_

It was six months before Captain Trips. She had time. Time to do what, though? 

_Other than have a lot of sex._

She couldn’t help smiling at the absurdity of it. Surely once would be enough? All that mattered was for her to lose her virginity, and Flagg would lose interest in her. She hoped. Anyway, there was plenty of time for that. 

She frowned, leafing through her notes and sifting through her memories. The other Nadine had understandably focused on her not murdering anyone, not willingly giving herself up to Flagg, and breaking Flagg’s hold on her. Done. Nadine certainly wouldn’t repeat those mistakes, not with the knowledge she had now. 

All that obscene sex with Harold. Killing Nick and Frannie and Stu and Larry—had she killed _all_ of them? There had been other people at the meeting too, and she didn’t even know who they were. Her memories stopped where the other Nadine’s did. For all she knew, someone had brought twelve-year-old Gina McCone to the meeting. For all she knew, Larry had brought Leo.

Her stomach lurched, and she once again staggered to the refrigerator and leaned her forehead against it. 

_But I won’t do that. I already know I won’t._ So. What else?

Could she prevent Captain Trips? She searched her memories, but found that she had no idea of how or even where it had started. Stu had been imprisoned in the plague center in Vermont, but he’d been taken from Texas. A lot of people had thought it was a biological weapon that had gotten loose by accident, but who knew if that was true? 

She imagined trying to search the entire state of Texas in the hope of finding a no doubt classified biological weapons facility whose door she could knock on to tell them to be more careful with a plague virus that people would nickname Captain Trips after it got loose and killed nearly everyone. At best, she’d wind up being interrogated with all the handy-dandy drugs and electrics kept for people the government had decided needed to vanish off the map in the name of national security. At worst, she might even somehow cause the virus to get loose. She hadn’t spent ten years teaching “A Sound of Thunder” for nothing. 

Nadine gave up on the idea of saving the world. She’d just save the people she could, starting with herself. Then Leo, again—the one thing she’d done right in that other life. Then seduce Larry before Lucy showed up. Once she was in the Free Zone, she could either talk Harold out of the bomb (would he even have tried it without her egging him on?) or warn the others about him. That was what the other Nadine had wanted, and that was plenty.

But why be bound by the other Nadine? She obviously hadn’t made the best choices anyway. Why wait for Leo to be forced to fend for himself, nearly die of an infected rat bite, and lose his mind for months, only to be cured by a miracle? She could make it so he didn’t need a miracle.

For the first time since she’d woken up, Nadine smiled. She went back to her bedroom and began to draft her resignation letter. It seemed absurd to bother when everyone would be dead in six months anyway, but in the meantime, she’d need a good reference. 

 

It was amazing how fast you could leave one life and start a new one, if you really wanted to. It took Nadine less than two months to install herself in Epsom, New Hampshire as a substitute teacher and a babysitter for Leo and his three little sisters. She was kind to them, but tried not to get too attached. She’d taken to thinking of everyone she met as having a terminal illness with six months to live. 

Meeting Leo as Leo, not Joe, was strange. _She’d_ never known Joe, but she remembered him. And she liked Leo immediately. It wasn’t the same as her relationship with Joe, but of course being a babysitter for a normal boy who had his parents and siblings and entire community was different from becoming mother to a feral child who had lost everything. When the flu hit, Leo would never know how lucky he was to have someone he already knew and liked right there. 

A month after she’d moved to Epsom, Nadine dreamed.

Darkness. The scurrying of rats. And then moonlight, and the clack of worn bootheels on blacktop. _He_ was enjoying a little midnight stroll down a deserted highway. The sound of his footsteps went metallic as he walked over a cattle guard, then returned to their usual click-click-click. 

Tick-tick-tick. Three months till Doomsday.

Nadine was running through the woods. Running to her dark bridegroom. Her feet were wet with dew, the soles cut with stones. Her legs were scratched with briars. He liked it when she bled. 

_No, no, I can’t, I can’t, I won’t, wake up, Nadine, WAKE UP!_

But she didn’t. Panting, she staggered on to the blacktop and collapsed at his feet. He looked down at her, her lover, her rapist, the father of her child, her killer, her king. 

“Nadine,” he purred. “Nadine, my queen. Open up, my dear.”

She opened her mouth, disgustingly wide, then snapped it shut as he roared with laughter. “Lower down, Nadine. Your other opening. The front one.”

Nadine spread her legs for him, right there on the blacktop. He crouched down, balancing easily on his heels. Their faces were almost level, but she still couldn’t see his. He didn’t move, but she could feel the direction of his gaze by the crawling sensation on her skin. She was soaking wet, dripping on to the blacktop, throbbing with need.

She was begging, “Please, please, fuck me, touch me, anything, please,” writhing on the highway under the moon and his gaze.

“Soon,” he promised. “Soon.” 

She woke up moaning, drenched in sweat, her hand jammed between her thighs, rubbing so hard at the slickness that she bruised herself against her pelvic bone, but she needed that, she needed it because he wasn’t there, not yet, not yet, but soon—

Nadine came in pain and disgust and ecstasy. Then she lay in the wet sheets, sticky and sore, her heart pounding. She was still bound to him. 

_I have to find a man,_ she thought as that old familiar chill spread through her bones. _Right away. I’ll go to the bar…_

Right. _The_ bar. Epsom only had one. And if respectable substitute teacher Nadine Cross was caught trawling it for a quick fuck, that would be the end of her as the Rockways’ babysitter. 

Mr. Rockway, then? But even if she could seduce him, that seemed more likely to end in the loss of her babysitting job than getting a drink-and-quickie at the Hideout Saloon. Maybe if she took a weekend and drove to New York City…?

 _If you go all the way there, you might as well just look up Larry and fuck him early_ , she jeered to herself. 

Then she gave the idea serious consideration. Wouldn’t everything be easier if she knew Larry _and_ Leo before the flu? She could get Larry to come see her hometown right before it hit, and so spare him that horrible trip through the Lincoln tunnel… which would leave Rita to die in New York, most likely. But in the other Nadine’s time, Rita had gone with Larry and died anyway. Or Nadine could take Leo to intercept Larry and Rita as they left the tunnel, and steal Rita’s pills so she couldn’t overdose. When you knew what was going to happen, you had so many options. 

She had barely begun to scratch their surface.

 _I don’t_ have _to have sex with Larry,_ she thought. _I don’t even have to stay with Leo._

 _So cold!_ exclaimed some shocked nanny part of her. _He’s your_ son! _Aren’t you supposed to be doing better this time around?_

But Joe, not Leo, was the boy she’d really loved. Leo would never love her like Joe had loved her. He liked his new babysitter with the weird hair, and no doubt he’d attach himself to her once his family was dead. But Joe had loved her like she was his entire world. Leo could never do that.

If she protected Leo, Joe would never exist. If she went away, then came back, letting events occur without her interference, she could have Joe again. She didn’t have to bring him to Boulder. She could take him and run. If Joe never met Mother Abagail, he'd stay Joe forever.

Nadine sprang out of bed, flinging away the disgusting wet sheets, and took a shower. As the water ran over her, sleeking back her white hair, she let herself be cold and weigh out her options. 

Leo was a child, and she did love him, like she loved all the children she taught. Stepping in to save him what pain she could was the right thing to do. Even if it meant the son she’d once had, the mother he’d once had, would only exist in one woman’s memory of a time that never was. But she didn’t need to stay with him to protect him. She could hand him over to someone else… and she knew just the person.

The next time she babysat, she brought Leo an old guitar. 

“I found it while I was cleaning out my garage,” she said with a smile. “No idea where it came from. I can’t play, but I thought Leo might like it, since he loves listening to music.”

He instantly took to the guitar, which she’d bought in a pawn shop at the next town over. She introduced him to “Baby, Can You Dig Your Man?” and put the idea in his head that an upcoming music camp in New York City would be the most fun thing ever. She didn’t need to convince his parents that he was a musical genius whose talent needed to be nurtured and encouraged; his playing did that all by itself. 

When he played “Baby, Can You Dig Your Man?” she told him that she’d heard an interview with Larry Underwood, and he’d said he lived in New York City and spent lots of time in Central Park. She added that he sounded like a real nice guy, and Leo should definitely introduce himself and ask for an autograph if he ever spotted him. 

And then she was done. Leo would be in New York City when the superflu hit, and he’d know who to look for and where. Larry had told the other Nadine that Central Park was where the superflu survivors had gathered. Hopefully he'd be nicer to a kid who didn’t immediately try to murder him with a carving knife.

Nadine invented a sick mother and gave her notice. 

Tick-tick-tick. Two months till Doomsday. 

She left everything behind but a suitcase of clothes and drove from motel to motel, uncertain where she wanted to be when Captain Trips hit, other than as far from Las Vegas as possible. Would Flagg follow her all the way up to Canada, or down to Mexico? But no, that wasn’t his style. He didn’t follow. He _called_. 

She complained of insomnia to a friendly doctor and got a prescription for sleeping pills. So much for Flagg. Foiled by a little white pill. But knowing that he could be calling—could even be present in some sense—and she’d just blinded herself to him was worse than the dreams, so she stopped. 

Almost worse. She started them up again.

But what if he walked right into the room with her, while she lay helpless and ignorant in her drugged sleep? Nadine would be the original Sleeping Beauty from the fairy tales they didn’t read to the kiddies, the one where the prince rapes her in her enchanted sleep and she wakes up giving birth.

She threw away the pills. 

Nadine dreamed. She was a scarecrow in a field of corn, naked and tied to the pole with barbed wire. It was a tradition in the town. Any man could make use of her, so long as he didn’t do that one little thing. She was used and humiliated and degraded, and she both experienced it and watched in a shameful dark ecstasy. But all that was just the appetizer. The real meal was yet to come. 

When she heard bootheels scuffling through the earth, she pulled so hard at the wire, trying to get to her reward, that it ripped her veins open. She lay bleeding to death in the dirt, but she spread her legs and smiled coquettishly up at him, hoping he’d fuck her before she died. She woke up moaning and spreading her thighs open with her hands, but she couldn’t come until she used her nails to make herself bleed.

Afterward, Nadine stood in a cold shower, shivering and furious, as much at herself as at Flagg. How hard was it, to find one random man to break this fucking spell? Why couldn’t she bring herself to do it?

 _”Because you’re saving yourself for me, Nadine, to be my queen.”_ Of course.

It felt like her choice, but it must be a compulsion. It felt like a compulsion, but it must be her choice. Round and round and round it went, an endless cycle of promises made and broken. And one terrible promise kept. 

If she couldn’t do that one thing, that one little thing, how could she know she wouldn’t murder innocent people, innocent children maybe, Frannie’s baby for sure, just so she could keep her desert rendezvous with her destined rapist? 

She stared into the bathroom mirror. Her reflection, ghost-pale, cheeks carved thin, white hair floating like billowing gauze, stared moonily back at her. Not the other Nadine, but close enough. Very close indeed now. 

“What was the point?” Nadine whispered. “Why force all that knowledge into my head if I can’t do anything about it?”

Would she too seize some of the dark man’s power for a desperate trip into the past? Would she become an other Nadine for her own past self, and would that Nadine too become an other Nadine, and on and on in a hellish merry-go-round?

She gripped the bathroom sink, gazing at eyes that gazed emptily back. And then, though Nadine was still, her reflection moved. 

“You can,” said the other Nadine, the Nadine-in-the-mirror with the black streak gone from her moon-white hair. “I gave you more than I said the first time: everything I know, and some of what _he_ knows. When I stole his power, some of his memories came with it.”

“Oh, God,” whispered Nadine. “I don’t want them.”

“I figured you’d say that,” said Nadine-in-the-mirror. “But you have them whether you want them or not. And now that you know you have them, you can find them.”

Nadine lashed out, punching the mirror. It shattered in a spiderweb, fragmenting Nadine-in-the-mirror into a hundred broken women. 

“They’ll find _you,_ if you don’t!” Nadine-in-the-mirror called to Nadine’s back as she slammed the bathroom door. 

She sat on the thin motel mattress, her head in her hands, wishing she’d never known anything. If everything was going to happen more-or-less as it had before, she’d have preferred not to know in advance. And she _really_ didn’t want to have anything from the dark man’s life inside her head. 

The cold part of her said, _Well, you have it whether you want it or not. Might as well use it._

Nadine closed her eyes and let her mind wander. You didn’t find lost memories by hunting them down like deer, but by setting out a net and letting them swim in. 

What would it be like to see through _his_ eyes…?

_A young man in a prison cell, gaunt and desperate, eyed the half-gnawed leg of a dead man like a fine steak dinner._

_A middle-aged fat man sat drunk and despairing on an Army base full of corpses, waiting hopelessly for someone to come give him an order._

_A beautiful woman with a dancer’s lithe body dropped to her knees on a burning-hot sidewalk and bent over to kiss his boots._

And for all of them, the thought was the same: _My people. My army. My first little rocks on which to build my kingdom_.

Nadine opened her eyes. She’d seen them before, via the other Nadine’s memories, but only briefly. She hadn’t known their names, let alone their significance. Now she did. They were the dark man’s first recruits. His building blocks, so to speak. 

What would happen if she took them away?

 _You’re insane,_ said the part of her that Nadine was pretty sure was the sane part. _It’s suicidal. All three of them swore their loyalty to the dark man, and Lloyd was a murderer before that. They’ll kill you. And if they don’t, Flagg will._

But the cold part, which she was growing to trust more and more, said, _He’s going to kill you anyway. What have you got to lose?_

Nadine consulted Flagg’s memories to see if it was even possible. The Army cook, Whitney Horgan, was currently at Fort Irwin in Barstow, CA, and he’d stay there until someone came and collected him. Jenny Engstrom, the Las Vegas nightclub dancer, would also stay where she was, though a ripple of horror ran down Nadine’s spine at the thought of having to go to Flagg’s own city, the place where she—where other Nadine—had died.

But Lloyd Henreid, the prisoner on Death Row in Phoenix, was another story. She wouldn’t be able to get to him until everyone in his vicinity was dead, and Flagg would come for him eight days later. She didn’t know what he’d do when he found that his very first recruit and loyal right-hand man was gone. But she didn’t want to be anywhere near him when he did.

Tick-tick-tick. One day till Doomsday. 

She had to hurry.

 

The power was out in the maximum-security jail. Nadine had one bad moment when she thought she’d have to go out and find a blowtorch (a tool she’d never used, and suspected she’d be liable to set herself on fire with) to melt the lock, and plenty more at every scuttling, skittering sound in the flashlight-illuminated dark. There were rats in the jail. Rats were _his_ animals. 

What if he decided to come early this time around? Nadine had already changed something, and for all she knew, that had changed everything. Images of squashed butterflies and the clack of cowboy boots chased each other through her mind, alternating with the thought that Lloyd, “the baby-faced killer,” was liable to sweet-talk her into opening the door, then rape and murder her before strolling out to keep his own rendezvous. 

_If I get a bad feeling—a worse feeling—I just won’t let him out,_ she thought. 

It would be terrible to die alone and starving in a dark cell, but there’d been a lot of terrible going around lately. Declining to offer herself up as a sacrifice certainly wouldn’t be the worst thing she’d done. Would do. Might do.

Inside his cell, Lloyd was crying and rocking and clutching a bloody dead rat in both hands. He was so absorbed that he neither saw nor heard her till she shone the flashlight right into his cell.

He screamed, then shoved the rat under his mattress like a teenager hiding his _Playboy_ when his mother barged into his bedroom. “I wasn’t going to do nothing with it! It was going to bite me, that’s all!”

In Flagg’s memory, Lloyd had been far thinner, stinking of rotten meat and the acrid nail polish remover odor of ketones. His body was devouring itself for lack of anything better. He’d eaten up all the rat and licked its bones, and started in on the only inmate within reach, but there just wasn’t that much to reach. Flagg’s heart, if he had such a thing, had been filled with a dark delight at the sight. Here was his perfect acolyte, a man capable of great, even unbreakable loyalty, and in the dire straits that would cement it. Yes, Flagg had timed his visit to Lloyd’s cell exactly right.

Nadine felt nothing but pity, and relief that she’d made it to Phoenix in time to spare Lloyd worse things than the decision to try a little filet of rat. If she couldn’t trust him not to turn on her, she wouldn’t unlock his cell. But she’d come back with a flashlight, a last meal, and some bottles of pills.

Lloyd was staring at her, his mouth open. She’d had students like him, slow boys who took twice as long with their assignments as anyone else, then forgot to turn them in at all. Bright boys with cruel streaks liked those sorts of boys. They could egg them on to start fights or vandalize cars or catch girls alone in bathrooms, then leave them to take the blame. Boys like Lloyd never squealed on their ‘friends.’

“Do you have the key?” Lloyd asked. “Please, miss, tell me you have the key!”

“I have it,” Nadine said. “Lloyd, what are you going to do if I let you out?”

“Get some food. I’m hungry.”

Nadine reframed the question. “If I let you out, will you hurt me?”

Lloyd looked at her blankly. “No. You didn’t do nothing to me. You saved me!” Then he realized why she was asking. “Oh, because I killed some people. That was Poke, miss! He did it, not me. He did all of it. I had nothing to do with it. Anyway, I don’t have a gun.”

He had a three-foot steel bar that he’d detached from the cot, with an unpleasant wet mark on one end to boot, but Nadine figured that was from the rat. Lloyd had clearly forgotten all about it. And now that she was standing there talking to him, with the tears still wet on his cheeks, she couldn’t imagine tossing him a bottle of suicide pills and walking away.

She unlocked the door. It was stiff, obviously rarely operated manually, and Lloyd had to help her drag it open. He eagerly followed her out of the prison, trotting at her heels like a well-trained dog and stomping his feet to scare away the rats. 

“Don’t worry, miss,” he said, kicking at one that came close. “I won’t let them near you. I’ll kill those fuckers—sorry.”

Nadine stifled a mad giggle at that. She had no idea how he had picked up that she was a teacher or at least in the category of women not to swear around—with her ghostly white hair and travelling clothes, she would have been unrecognizable to her former students and colleagues—but he was acting exactly like the slow boys she’d taken under her wing, letting them practice their reading on their favorite comic books and steering them toward better friends.

He _was_ good at keeping the rats away. Bizarrely, Nadine realized that she felt safer walking out of the prison with Lloyd than walking in alone. 

When they got near the open doors, he stumbled backward, shielding his eyes from the blinding Arizona sun. She looked around, then plucked a pair of mirrored sunglasses from a guard’s corpse and offered them to him. “Here. Wear these till your eyes get used to the sun. It might take a while. You were in the dark a long time.”

“I sure was,” Lloyd agreed, gratefully putting them on. He adjusted them, glanced at himself in a window, and smiled. “Thanks. I like them.”

As they left the prison, she mentally rehearsed how to explain to him in terms he’d understand that the dark man was bad news, and he needed to high-tail it out of town and not stop running till he hit the east coast. Before she could, Lloyd stopped and looked around wonderingly at the empty streets.

“Everyone’s dead,” he said. “I knew everyone was at the prison, but I wasn’t sure about outside. I thought they might have just forgotten it. Are we the only two people left?”

“No. There’s others. Not many. Listen, Lloyd, let’s find you some food, and then there’s something I need to tell you before I go.”

“Go?” he repeated. “Can’t I come with you? You said there were other people. Some of them are probably bad, like Poke. I could protect you. We could break into a store and steal me a gun.”

“You don’t know where I’m going. I haven’t even told you my name!”

Lloyd considered that. “What’s your name?”

“Nadine Cross.”

He stuck out his hand. “Lloyd Henreid. I guess you already knew that. So, can I come with you?”

She’d intended to take a knight off the dark man’s chessboard, not acquire him for her very own. But he was looking at her like Joe had, with loyalty and even the beginnings of love. 

“Sure,” she said. “Sure, you can come with me. Let’s get you a good meal and better clothes. And then we’re going to Barstow.”

 

Something terrible had happened at the Army base. Nadine didn’t know why and wasn’t sure she wanted to, but there was a half-filled mass grave and it wasn’t for flu victims. Every one of the people in it—men, women, even a few children—had been mowed down with bullets. 

Lloyd, munching from a family-sized bag of Doritos, glanced down and remarked, “Looks like the gas station after Poke and I hit it.”

Nadine, already nauseated from the sight and smell, decided she wasn’t up for making that a teachable moment. 

They found Whitney Horgan at the base of the flagpole. He was in his uniform with a whiskey bottle in one hand and a gun in the other, holding them like he was trying to balance a scale.

He was drunk enough to not be surprised to see them, but just staggered to his feet and tried to stand straight. “I put the flag at half-mast.”

“That’s good,” Nadine said cautiously. “It’s respectful.”

“For everyone,” Whitney said, swaying. “Not just the soldiers. The whole country. The people we shot for violating quarantine. I’m a cook. I never fired my gun before except in training. I’m rated an expert marksman but they had us put our rifles on automatic. Why bother with ratings if we’re just going to use automatic? A fucking chimp could slaughter kids with automatic!”

Nadine noticed that Lloyd had dropped the Doritos and had his hand on his own gun. She moved to defuse the situation. Whitney didn’t seem like a threat to anyone but himself.

“You’re a soldier,” she said. “You have to follow orders.”

“That’s right. You… you from HQ?” He stuck the gun back in its holster, put down the bottle with exaggerated care, and gave her a sloppy salute. 

Avoiding the question, she said, “This base is closed. Come with us. We’re setting up a new HQ.”

Whitney followed her back to the car, then promptly passed out in the back seat. 

“Good job, Lloyd,” Nadine said. “You protected me, but you didn’t get trigger-happy. That was perfect.”

Lloyd grinned and settled into the driver’s seat. “Hope he doesn’t puke in the car. But he’s a soldier, that’s good. Fat slob, but he knows how to shoot. Good find.”

 _What does Lloyd think I’m doing?_ Nadine wondered. _Mustering an army?_

But she had an uneasy feeling that that was exactly what she was doing. Unless Whitney was a whole different person when he was sober, she couldn’t cut him loose with a warning any more than she could do that to Lloyd. Whitney wanted orders. _Needed_ orders. If she didn’t give him any, he’d find the man who would.

“Where now?” Lloyd asked.

A shudder ran down Nadine’s spine. “Vegas.”

 

The neon lights no longer shone, but the city glittered in the sunlight. Brilliant light glanced off glass windows. Flecks of mica sparkled in the sidewalks. This was _his_ place, this gleaming city of heartbreak and deception, squatting in the middle of the desert like some bloated spider that sucks up water and money instead of blood.

It was Jenny Engstrom’s city, too. Flagg had tapped that beautiful nightclub dancer just like he’d tapped Nadine. Made her get down on her knees and kiss his boots, right there in those sparkling streets. He liked making women degrade themselves, apparently. Nadine wasn’t sure whether to be relieved or furious that it wasn’t just her.

Whitney and Lloyd flanked her when she got out of the car. It made her want to laugh, a little bit, at how seriously they were taking the jobs she’d never given them, stalking at her side like she was the President and they were the world’s only surviving Secret Service agents. 

“Guys,” Nadine said. “Jenny’s a nightclub dancer. She’s not going to hurt me.”

“Ma’am, you never know,” said Whitney.

It was only then that she realized that neither man had ever asked her how she’d found him, or how she knew to find Jenny or how she knew Jenny’s name. They just accepted it. Lloyd wasn’t bright and Whitney had been trained not to ask questions, but…

Jenny stepped out of a casino and looked them over, unsmiling. “Where is he? I waited here for _him._ ”

Nadine realized that after Lloyd and Whitney, she’d let down her guard. Jenny wasn’t going to take everything Nadine said as gospel just because she was the first living person she’d seen in a while.

“Can we talk alone?” Nadine asked.

Jenny looked wary, but nodded.

“I’ll have to pat you down, ma’am,” said Whitney apologetically. 

Jenny stood like a mannequin and let him do it, then followed Nadine into a restaurant where the men could watch through the windows, but not hear what they said. 

“How’d you know where I was?” Jenny asked as soon as they sat down at a booth. “Did _he_ tell you?”

“In a way,” Nadine replied. She studied Jenny’s hard and beautiful face, and thought of teenage girls growing up too fast and alone, or better off alone. But she dismissed that idea right away. Jenny wasn’t a student, and Nadine wasn’t her teacher. The slightest hint of condescension, and she’d be gone. They needed to talk woman to woman. 

No. They all needed to talk.

“Can you excuse me for a moment?” Nadine held the door open and called out to Lloyd and Whitney. “Come in. Both of you. I have something I want to tell you.”

Nadine told them everything, from the beginning. She thought Jenny at least would interrupt her, but she started with the first dream of the dark man she’d ever had, and they all nodded, looking uneasy. She left nothing out. Flagg hadn’t spared her modesty, so why should she?

“I don’t know what happens after he kills me,” Nadine said at last. “Maybe he wins. Maybe you’re all fine. But you’ll be living in the devil’s city, where your neighbors get crucified in the desert and women throw themselves out of plate-glass windows to get away from him. So that’s the choice. Stay here and cleave to him, or run and hope you can resist his call.”

“I’m sticking with you,” Lloyd said. “Wherever you go, I’ll go.”

It probably wasn’t a feeling people had often, but Nadine couldn’t help envying Lloyd. Things were a lot simpler for him.

“So am I,” said Whitney. “I don’t know if I _can_ resist. But I don’t think I want the orders he has to give. If you run, I’ll run with you.”

“He makes me kiss his boots?” Jenny burst out. “For real? I thought that was just in the dream!”

“I don’t think he _makes_ you,” Nadine replied. “I think if you wait for him to get here, you’ll _want_ to.”

Jenny's lip curled in revulsion. “Oh, I guess I’ll run then. But he’s stronger than any of us. If he snaps his fingers, we’ll all fall in like a pack of dogs. Look at you, Nadine. All you have to do to break his spell is fuck someone, and even though you know what’ll happen if you don’t, you still can’t do it!”

“I can,” Nadine said defensively. “I _will_. I just… haven’t gotten around to it yet.”

“I don’t know if you swing my way,” Jenny said. For the first time, Nadine saw her smile. “But if you want to get on that right now, I sure wouldn’t kick you out of bed.”

Whitney, looking acutely embarrassed, said, “This is about getting a child. So it has to be a man. I’d be happy to help you out if you wanted, of course, ma'am.”

"Me too," said Lloyd, looking distinctly hopeful.

“Wait,” Nadine said slowly. “Whitney, you think it’s not just sex? You think I have to get pregnant?”

“It stands to reason, doesn’t it?” Whitney said. “If you’re carrying someone else’s child, you can’t have his. And you said the child was what he really wanted.”

“He wouldn’t let me lose my virginity when I was sixteen. I’d hardly still have been pregnant from that!” Nadine didn't care for her waspish tone, but she couldn’t help it. She didn't want that to be true. If she had to get pregnant to stop Flagg, that was a whole ‘nother ball game. 

“No, but you might’ve gotten married,” Jenny said thoughtfully. “Same with anyone—well, any man—you slept with. If you’d stayed with him, you might have been pregnant again by the time the dark man came calling.”

Whitney added, “My wife had one child, and after that the doctors said she could never have another. Maybe you’re like that. You might even die if you ever give birth.”

Lloyd and Jenny glared at him, but Nadine didn’t mind the idea. It was certainly the best argument yet against trying to get pregnant right now.

Whitney was no one’s idea of a handsome man, but it wasn’t as if the purpose would be to have a wonderful time. Lloyd reminded her way too much of her students, and was a murderer to boot. ( _That’s rich coming from the dark man’s bride_ , some inner voice sneered.) Nadine hadn’t thought she swung that way, but Jenny was a beautiful woman with a strong personality, and hadn't killed anyone so far as Nadine was aware. She’d have been Nadine’s choice if a woman would do. 

What _would_ do? All that sex the other Nadine had with Harold hadn’t broken Flagg’s hold on her. Because she hadn’t gotten pregnant? Because there was something mystically significant about the one act that could get you pregnant? Or because she’d obeyed Flagg’s orders, and been faithful to him in her heart?

If she had sex with someone now, if she even got pregnant now, would it mean anything at all? Or would it just be another way she was letting Flagg dictate her actions, whether by obedience or rebellion, rather than acting according to her own will?

“I appreciate the offers,” Nadine said to them all. “Really, I do. But I’m going to say no for now. Let’s sleep here tonight and leave in the morning. Flagg isn’t going to come for us for a while yet. He’s not planning on visiting Lloyd’s cell for another five days.” 

Without seeming to notice that he was doing it, Lloyd stuffed a huge handful of potato chips in his mouth. 

 

Nadine dreamed. 

She stood on a high place that she now recognized as the Las Vegas rooftop where she’d died. Rats scuttled. Crows flew against pale clouds in a dark sky. The air was very cold.

Bootheels clacked on concrete, and a dark figure appeared from the shadows. 

“Oh how I love to love Nadine,” he crooned, striding toward her. 

A hideously familiar heat gathered between her legs. After everything that had happened, she still felt it. She still wanted him. It was enough to make her despair.

“You can make me want you,” Nadine said, forcing the words out. “You can make me beg. I don’t know how to break your hold on me. But whenever I’m awake, I’m going to keep trying to figure out how. None of this is my will!”

Flagg stopped still, then tapped one boot on the ground. Nadine couldn’t see his face, but she thought that he seemed taken aback.

The other Nadine, pregnant, eyes moon-mad, rose up from the shadows behind Flagg. “Remember me, lover?”

He spun around, surprised for the first time that Nadine had ever seen. “What are you?”

“That’s for me to know and you to find out,” the other Nadine said, and let out a spooky giggle. “Want to know what else I know? I know your face. I know your past. I know your true name.”

“Nobody knows that,” Flagg said. “I don’t even know that!”

“Oh, but I do,” the other Nadine crooned, and reached out to stroke his hair. 

He jerked away from her touch and snapped his fingers. Sparks flew out, but died when they touched the other Nadine. Flagg took a step back.

“What, you don’t want me any more?” The other Nadine followed him, stepping like a ballerina, her hair and gauze billowing out in a wind that always, only blew toward him. 

“Get away from me!” Flagg shouted. 

“I know how to get rid of her,” Nadine said. It was the cold part of her speaking, and she was glad to have it. “I know how to make her never be.”

Flagg, shuddering away from the other Nadine’s touch, turned to her. “Oh, is that how it is? Yes… That makes sense. Tell me how.”

“Don’t come to Vegas,” Nadine said. “Relinquish your hold on me, and your hold on Lloyd and Jenny and Whitney and everyone like them. You’re the one who made her. You’re the only one who can unmake her.”

The other Nadine smiled, her long pale fingers working at the buckle of Flagg’s jeans. He tried to pull away, but her blowing hair had wrapped around him and held him fast.

“Done!” cried Flagg.

 

Nadine woke up. Her sheets were dry. Wondering, she looked out the windows of the hotel room. The sun shone hard and bright on the streets of her city.

When she went down, she found the others already gathered in a huddle in the casino. 

“I dreamed…” Nadine began, and saw from their faces that they had too. She told them her dream.

“He told me get down on my knees and kiss his boots,” Jenny said. “I—I started to. But I spit on them instead.”

Whitney was white and shaking. “He killed me. I called him a devil, and he killed me. They say you can’t die in a dream. But I did. I died.”

“He told me to choose. Said I could go with the schoolmarm and get my knuckles whacked, or go with him to help him rule a glorious kingdom and Pokerize all my enemies.” Lloyd seemed more wistful than upset. 

“And?” Jenny said pointedly, when Lloyd didn’t go on.

“Oh, I told him I was sticking with Nadine,” Lloyd said cheerfully. “She saved my life! And all my enemies are probably dead already.”

“Do you really think he’s gone?” Whitney asked. 

“I don’t think he’s coming to Vegas,” Nadine replied. “Gone for good? I doubt it. I expect he’ll set up in some other city.”

A faint sound in the distance made them all freeze, listening. It was footsteps, approaching. 

Jenny went pale. “It’s him.”

Nadine’s heart had nearly knocked through her chest, but then it steadied. “No, it can’t be. He wears boots. Those are softer.”

As if he couldn’t change his shoes. Then again, maybe he couldn’t. He’d been unable to change some other things.

“Hello?” The voice was a woman’s, on the edge of exhaustion. “Anybody here?”

“In here!” Jenny called, recovering herself.

The door swung open. A woman staggered in, carrying a young boy who looked like he’d cried himself to sleep. She looked around in amazement.

“Four of you.” She sank into the nearest booth, and laid the boy down beside her. He didn’t stir. “That’s more people than I’ve seen in a week.”

“Is that your son?” Whitney asked.

“No, I found him wandering the streets in Reno. His name’s Dinny McCarthy. I’m Angie Hirschfield.”

They introduced themselves, and Lloyd fetched her a glass of water. But Angie still seemed uneasy.

“Is…” Angie glanced around nervously. “Is _he_ here?”

Nadine looked her in the eyes and kept her voice even. “No. He isn’t. You can stay if you like. Or you can go look for him. I imagine you’ll find him if you do. But if I was you, I wouldn’t take a child to him.”

“Oh,” Angie said in a small voice. “Do I have to decide now?”

Nadine shook her head. “Take your time. It took me a while to make up my mind, too.”

“Six of us now,” Jenny remarked. “Used to be just enough for a table. Now it’s enough for a city.”

“There’ll be more coming,” Nadine said. “A lot more, I think.”

She hoped Flagg was sending a message right now to the worst of the survivors he'd originally summoned, the rapists and wife-beaters and pyromaniacs, that he’d gone somewhere else and to follow him there. The rest, she hoped, would be the ones he'd agreed to release, people like Jenny and Whitney and Lloyd. People like Nadine, with one foot in the light and one in the dark, who could choose to go either way.

Lloyd broke the silence with a question that had to be on all of their minds. “What do we do now?” 

“Well,” Nadine said. “I was thinking we could start with getting the lights back on.”


End file.
